310 
THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
which we weave into a beautiful garland that has all 
the mellowness of the autumn days together with their 
brilliant coloring. Here is a bunch of Fringed Gentians 
with their carollas 
“ Blue, blue, as it' the sky let tall 
A flower from its cerulean wall," 
as Bryant sings, though, indeed, the color is of a purpler 
tinge than the sky. This particular bunch we gathered 
on the border of a hillside road, shut in by a sandy 
slope, where the stm shone warmly. The flower grows 
on a tall footstalk, with a long, bell-shaped calyx, out 
of which press its fringed edges. It is a coy, maidenly 
flower, only coming to its finder after diligent search; 
but one feels repaid. There are several varieties of the 
Gentian in this region, and all are pretty. 
In this autumn bouquet we have arranged many 
bright-colored berries which are now among the most 
noticeable glories of the hedges and meadows. There 
are the orange and scarlet berries of the Bitter-Sweet 
(Celasiras), whose leaves have a fresh, yellowish, spring¬ 
like greenness till late into the fall. Sandwiched be¬ 
tween these are the milk-white berries of the Cohosh, 
or White Baueberry. and the black-purple fruit of the 
Elder; then come the deep-red seeds of the Dwarf 
Cornus, sometimes called Bunch-berries, each set, as 
the flower was, in a frame made by four or five oval 
leaves: and, when we can find them. Baueberry plumes, 
which are among the finest of all the autumn splendors, 
the red juice deepening into coral berries that glow all 
along its leaves and causes the branch to droop gracefully 
like a plume. 
Golden Rods in bewildering variety glow in our 
lovely garland—all beautiful and stately as a Czarina. 
Some of these shoot up into tall plumes; others hang 
gracefully, the flowers rising from the upper side of the 
stalk in clusters. The leaves, too, of the different 
varieties differ in shape. There are a dozen species in 
this bunch, the search for which has led us along 
pleasant lanes and hedges in the dreamy autumn 
afternoon. 
Closely allied to the Golden Rods are the Asters, sort 
of cousins, in fact, both belonging to the great family 
of Composites. These are now in their season of glory, 
more than one hundred species being found in America, 
all gay and showy, with crymbed, panieled, or race¬ 
mose heads; flowers radiate, the rays white, purple, or 
blue and fertile, the disk yellow or reddish. In the 
garden Asters, the disk flowers give place to repeated 
series of ray flowers, and assume the appearance of the 
well-known China Asters. They bloom till very late; 
long after the other flowers have yielded to the touch of 
frost, gay beds of Asters can be seen looking as fresh 
and joyous as though it were yet summer. 
Among the glories of the garden in these late days 
are the Dahlias. Stately, stiff, ceremonious duennas, 
they are suggestive of the old days of ruffs and starched 
petticoats, when court beauties in jeweled stomachers 
and fardingales assembled round the “ Virgin Queen,” 
starched and be-stomached more than any of them. In 
those days, however, the Dahlia did not frequent 
royal courts, unless, indeed, it gazed wonderfully on 
Aztec or Peruvian magnificence, in the nut-brown 
hands of some dusky maid of Montezuma’s Court, or 
the Inca's Palace of the Sun. For this plant is of 
tropic origin, and was first introduced into Europe by 
Alexander von Humboldt, in 1790. It has since been 
successfully cultivated by many gardeners on both 
sides of the sea. The flowers of all the species are dis¬ 
tinguished by the absence of a pappus, and by a double 
involucre, the outer being many leaved, and the inner 
consisting of one leaf divided into eight segments. 
Their showy bloom lasts through all October, if pro¬ 
tected from hard frosts. 
Then there are the delicate yellow, late-appearing 
blossoms of the Madeira Vine, which, with its shining 
graceful leaves are very attractive. The last of the 
Clematis, a great bough, all fleecy white, contrasts 
finely with the rest, and is no little addition to the 
floral wreath. How I wish I could keep it forever, this 
garland of ours; but no, it must fade and perish just 
like the beautiful autumn itself. It is no fairy princess 
to go to sleep and remain the same for a hundred years. 
I pick my last Aster with sorrowful regret, knowing 
that against all this bed of variegated color will soon 
only be a dull, blank whiteness. All too soon my 
autumn bouquet will be a thing of the past. 
F. M. Colby.. 
FLORAL DECORATIONS FOR THE DRAWING-ROOM. 
At the season of the year when Nature provides us 
with flowers with the same lavish hand with which, in 
autumn, she paints the woods red, yellow, copper and 
brown, it is comparatively easy to make our rooms gay 
with Nature’s gift, and, by a little care in their arrange¬ 
ment, to give by their means the impression that our 
rooms are owned by people of taste and culture, how¬ 
ever cheaply and barely they may be furnished. Say 
we have a corner that is too far away from the centre 
of the room to form a sociable position for a seat. Get 
a large trumpet-shaped vase (they may be had to the 
height of six feet, and almost at any price), and fill it 
with branches of Horse-Chestnut, if possible, for, either 
when in flower in early summer or when brightened by 
autumn tints, it is especially decorative, and the shape 
of its leaves is more graceful and adaptable to these 
purposes than those of any other forest tree. With a 
few of the largest and coarsest of our woodland Ferns 
arranged so as to hang over the sides of the vase, and 
some Bulrushes stretching their long, brown heads high 
above the chestnut foliage, your bare corner will be¬ 
come a thing of beauty instead of an eyesore. These 
vases, so filled, may also be placed with advantage to 
show above the pretty Japanese screens that abound in 
modern drawing-rooms. 
When water plants—such as yellow Irises (commonly 
